MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The most senior Catholic convicted of child sex abuse was sentenced Wednesday (March 13) to six years in prison for molesting two choirboys in an Australian cathedral in a crime the judge said showed “staggering arrogance.”

Cardinal George Pell must serve a minimum of three years and eight months before he is eligible for parole, according to the judge’s order. The five convictions against Pell carried a maximum possible sentence of 10 years each.

“In my view, your conduct was permeated by staggering arrogance,” Victoria state County Court Chief Judge Peter Kidd said in handing down the sentence.

Pope Francis’ former finance minister was convicted by a unanimous jury verdict in December of orally raping a 13-year-old choirboy and indecently dealing with the boy and the boy’s 13-year-old friend in the late 1990s, months after Pell became archbishop of Melbourne. A court order had suppressed media reporting the news until last month.

The 77-year-old denies the allegations and will appeal his convictions in the Victoria Court of Appeal on June 5. It was not immediately clear if he will also appeal the sentence.

For the first time in Pell’s many court appearances since he returned to Australia from the Vatican to face abuse charges, Pell wore an open-necked shirt without a cleric’s collar. He was also not wearing a cardinal’s gold ring, which might reflect strict rules on jewelry in the state penal system.

In explaining his sentencing decision, the judge said Pell had led an “otherwise blameless life.” Kidd said he believed given Pell’s age and lack of any other criminal record, the cardinal posed no risk of re-offending.

The judge also took pains to note that he was sentencing Pell for the offenses on which the cardinal had been convicted — and not for the sins of the Catholic Church.

“As I directed the jury who convicted you in this trial, you are not to be made a scapegoat for any failings or perceived failings of the Catholic Church,” Kidd said.

But the judge also said that Pell had abused his position of power and had shown no remorse for his crimes. Kidd described the assaults as egregious, degrading and humiliating to the victims.

Pell showed no emotion during the hourlong hearing and barely moved throughout. He stood silently with his hands behind his back as the judge read his sentence. Pell signed documents that registered him for life as a serious sexual offender before he was led from the dock by four prison officers.

In a statement, one of Pell’s victims called the judge’s sentence “meticulous and considered.”

“It is hard for me to allow myself to feel the gravity of this moment, the moment when the sentence is handed down, the moment when justice is done,” the man said in a statement read outside court by one of his lawyers, Vivian Waller. “It is hard for me, for the time being, to take comfort in this outcome. I appreciate that the court has acknowledged what was inflicted upon me as a child. However, there is no rest for me. Everything is overshadowed by the forthcoming appeal.”

The father of one of Pell’s victims who died of a heroin overdose in 2014 at the age of 31 paid tribute to his son’s childhood friend for speaking out.

“I commend the young fellow who has come forward,” the father said. “He kept it in for a long time and that would’ve been hell for him. Absolute hell.”

The father said he was “really appreciative and thankful that he did come forward.”

“I want to give him a hug. He was a fabulous little kid. He’s a fabulous man now,” the father said.
The father also described the sentence as “a disappointment.”

The father is considering suing Pell and the church over the abuse.

Australian law prohibits the publication of sex crime victims’ identities, so the father also cannot be identified.

Abuse victims’ groups also expressed disappointment that the punishment was not harsher.

The sentence “makes a mockery of the concept of true accountability and is not a sentence commensurate with the crimes committed and the harm reaped,” Blue Knot Foundation president Cathy Kezelman said in a statement.

SNAP, a U.S. support group for victim of clergy abuse, described the sentences as “comparatively light.”

“We hope that the sentence imposed on Cardinal George Pell will provide some measure of healing to the living survivor of his abuse and comfort and closure for the family of Pell’s non-surviving victim,” SNAP said in a statement.

The judge said Pell’s age was a significant factor in determining his sentence.

Pell suffers from hypertension that is exacerbated by stress and has a dual-chamber pacemaker, the judge said.

Pell used a cane to leave the court, after having both knees surgically replaced in December.

His sentencing comes on the sixth anniversary of Francis’ election as pope. Pell was in the conclave that elected Francis and remains eligible for any potential future conclave until age 80 or unless he is removed.

Asked by a reporter outside court after the sentencing whether the case against Pell amounted to a witch hunt, his lawyer Robert Richter gave a rueful smile.

“No comment — you be the judge,” Richter replied.

After centuries of impunity, cardinals from Australia to Chile and points in between are facing justice in both the Vatican and government courts for their own sexual misdeeds or for having shielded abusers under their watch.

Last week, France’s senior Catholic cleric, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, was convicted of failing to report a known pedophile priest to police. Barbarin was given a six-month suspended sentence.

Pope Francis last month defrocked the onetime leader of the American church after an internal investigation determined Cardinal Theodore McCarrick sexually molested children and adult men. It was the first time a cardinal had been defrocked over the child abuse scandal.

The surviving victim made a statement against Pell in 2015 — a year after the other victim’s death — to a police task force set up to investigate allegations that arose from a state parliamentary inquiry into handling of child abuse by religious and other nongovernment organizations. The task force also investigates allegations made to a similar national inquiry, called the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Pell gave evidence by video link from Rome to the royal commission, the nation’s highest level of inquiry, in 2016 about his time as a church leader in Melbourne and in his hometown of Ballarat. The four-year royal commission found in its 2017 report that the Melbourne Archdiocese had ignored or covered up allegations of child abuse by seven priests in a bid to protect the church’s reputation and avoid scandal.

The royal commission was critical of Pell’s predecessor in Melbourne, Archbishop Frank Little, who died in 2008. It made no findings against Pell, saying in a redacted report that it would not publish information that could “prejudice current or future criminal or civil proceedings.”

Australian police interviewed Pell about the survivor’s allegations in a Rome hotel in 2016. Pell described the allegations at the time as “vile and disgusting conduct” that went against everything he believed in.

Pell voluntarily returned to Australia in 2017 to face an array of child abuse charges, most of which have since been dropped. The full details of those allegations were suppressed by court orders.

Pell was once the highest-ranking Catholic in Australia’s second-largest city, where he is now a prisoner held in protective security. Pedophiles such as Pell are typically separated from the main prison populations in Australia.

Pell was 55 years old and had recently established a compensation plan for Melbourne’s victims of clergy abuse when he abused the two boys at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996. The survivor testified that Pell had walked in on the boys swigging altar wine in a back room after a Sunday Mass.

The judge rejected Richter’s submission that no person thinking rationally would molest two 13-year-old boys in a cathedral sacristy after a Mass with the doors open.

“To offend in such a risky and brazen manner, I infer that, for whatever reason, you were in fact prepared to take on such risks. I conclude that your decision to offend was a reasoned, albeit perverted one,” Kidd said.

More than a month later, Pell abused the survivor again, squeezing the boy’s genitals as they passed in a cathedral corridor after a Mass.

The judge said the assault was committed with “a degree of physical aggression and venom.”

About the author

Rod McGuirk

83 Comments

I’ve been reading Frederic Martel’s book “In the Closet of the Vatican.” One of the main points Martel brings homes is that in the Vatican it is usually the most virulent opponents of gay rights who tend to be secretly gay themselves. Isn’t this always the case no matter where you go? Cardinal Pell is mentioned as an example of this syndrome, along with others, and Pell’s outspoken opposition against Australia’s gay marriage initiative a few years ago is only the most recent example of his public record of homophobia; proving once again that William Shakespeare was right when he wrote centuries ago, “the lady doth protest too much methinks.”

The REAL news is actually HERE. Cardinal Pell, THE THIRD MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE VATICAN, is no longer there, because he was just sentenced to 6 years on two counts of child molestation. His lawyer said THIS:

““No more than a plain vanilla sexual penetration case where the child is not actively participating…”

I have an idea, Mr. Lawyer. Let’s subject YOUR CHILD to this and see how vanilla you see it. But no, BECAUSE IT IS A CHILD BEING SEXUALLY ATTACKED MY AN ADULT MAN!!!!!!! And your son doesn’t even have to actively participate!!! The cardinal will take care of that!

Decent people are horrified by it. Decent people don’t shrug it off as unimportant, or try to claim that the child was barely harmed by it. Decent people would like to see Pell and anyone in his entire vanilla-penetrating organization who thinks like you do or he does behind bars.

Decent people are obviously not this kind of lawyer. But wait! There’s MORE!!!!

“God has a wonderful plan for you, Cardinal Pell.” A conscience-less life, Public disgrace, and SIX YEARS IN PRISON. But so far, no defrocking, no excommunication, no nothing but some Defenders of the Faith pretending that this really isn’t as bad as everyone thinks. No, it’s worse.

“god has a wonderful plan for you, little boy victim #1.” Oh, wait. You grew up to be a suicidal drug addict, and didn’t make it to the trial. You might be burning in hell forever for that one.

“God has a wonderful plan for you, little boy victim #2.” Yeah. You weren’t little boy victim #1. Ain’t it wonderful!!?!?!? You got to live with this for years, face your accuser in court, let the entire world know what happened to you.

But now, let’s break from all of these wonderful plans god has for you, and you, and you, and you, and get to the REAL tragedy here. From the same news story: “The question now is what will happen to the Catholic Church, especially in Australia, where he presided. The sex abuse scandal has clearly had an impact on churchgoers. “It’s been disastrous,” said Dr. Peter Wilkinson, a former Catholic priest and researcher in Melbourne, where Cardinal Pell served as the archbishop. “I’d say we’ve lost about two, possibly three generations of young people, and now I think the situation is worsening. The older generation is following the young.”

The real question is this: why are the people who are not leaving remaining in this church? Why are they giving it money, defending the church by claiming this whole thing is a scam, a deflection, an attack by Satan, a plot by Gay Central, anything but what is obvious? And what about those public school teachers, eh? and Terry Bean, eh? And Jussie Smollett, eh? WHAT ABOUT THEM? But not what about Jabba the Trump.

Here is what we actually know. After tens of thousands of victims, mostly underaged boys and under 14 have come forward or been discovered in “the records of the church”, all the deflection in the world is not going to change the fact that the public knows it is not unusual for Catholic priests to have sexual relations with children, adolescent boys, girls, and adults in their charge— often times without even legal consent, let alone moral consent. Not to mention, thanks to Daddy McCarrick, EACH OTHER! In short, pretty much anything that moves, and has no more than two legs. And a whole hierarchy dedicated to ignoring it.

Now, I think I’ll just sit back and wait for the attacks on the messenger to begin, and the shoddy defense of the indefensible

I was going to ignore you, but I thought, “nah. he’s not a nice man. In fact, he seems obsessed by ‘Teh Geyz'”.
“It’s all a plot by gay central” is the only conspiracy some people need to blind themselves to the screams of molested children, the dysfunction of same-sex attracted and pedophile priests, the lies told by the church as they ‘discern’ genuine vocations of predatory priests, lives destroyed by predatory priests, a church that enables them, a lawyer who calls child rape “vanilla”, and a history going back 1000 years.
Thank you for proving my point far better than I could.
But wait! There’s MORE!!!!!!
“Three women in france abused by a priest. Story on CNN, which won’t let me copy the link. Feb 19, 2019 – Three women who say they were sexually abused by priests in France speak to CNN’s Melissa Bell about their stories.
John Caparelli, a former priest, on the list of abusive priests issued by the Dioscese in New Jersey. Found murdered in his home. 3/12/19.
.Here’s a real charmer. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjig6yD1f_gAhVBPq0KHf7OCpgQFjAFegQIBRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Fnews%2Fchurch-officials-shielded-priest-suspected-of-murder-for-decades%2F&usg=AOvVaw3UUVi2kLUEf44BWuE8uV64
Want to see more? Just google “arizona priest abuse murder” and keep going through the links. ALL THREE MILLIION OF THEM.
And then, make sure you talk about an imaginary conspiracy promulgated by an imaginary Gay Central by imaginary gays who have an imagery plan to infiltrate THE VERY REAL CHURCH.

Quoting you, just so you don’t change your original posting:
“There is no point in attacking the messenger. The sentence is abeyed pending an appeal, which more than likely will be successful.No one will read it about at RNS, and at that time you’ll be going on and on on another attack on this, that, or the other religion.” But you just did attack, it doesn’t change his conviction, you cannot know about a successful appeal, and it isn’t about your fanatasy about me.
But, on the other hand, you took the bait, and you were Right on schedule, dearie. Now the world knows that you, too, want to deflect attention from the fact that CARDINAL PELL WAS CONVICTED IN A COURT OF LAW. Of course he can appeal it. Ted Bundy did the same, I think.
The world knows that his LAWYER ADMITTING IT IN PUBLIC, AND TRYING TO LAUGH IT OFF AS ‘VANILLA PENETRATION’, absolutely made no impression on you. Yet another enabler, just like those nice Bishops, all the way up to Pope Frank, who apparently knew all about Cardinal McCarrick, and did nothing about it., according to Cardinal Vigano.
And certainly a cardinal wouldn’t lie about that.

“”It’s all a plot by gay central” is the only conspiracy some people need to blind themselves to the screams of molested children, the dysfunction of same-sex attracted and pedophile priests, the lies told by the church as they ‘discern’ genuine vocations of predatory priests,…”
Harry Hay marched with NAMBLA several times, and some lesbian organization in New York had them as members

Pointless whataboutism, irrelevant in the extreme, but typical for people like you, who seem to want to blind yourself to the screams of sexually abused children by a cardinal whose lawyer admitted it.

Of course the major fly (don’t excited) in your ointment is that I never denied that Cardinal Bell was convicted.

And, of course, you’ve left a vile trail of hatred of all things Catholic for some years now, so the fact that the trial came close to “Let’s have a fair trail before we hang him.” pretty much slipped right past you.

No, dearie. I am not trying to duck this situation. Another lie among the easy lies you wish to tell. I frankly pointed it all out. I underlined it. I trumpeted it.

but you are so blinded by hate and despite, like a few of your fellow travelers, that simple English simply escapes you.
but just in case, here is something even clearer for you, and just for you. CARDINAL PELL SEXUALLY ABUSED TWO LITTLE BOYS. CARDINAL PELL IS A CHILD MOLESTER. ANOTHER CATHOLIC PRIEST, AFTER ATTACKING GAY PEOPLE JUST LIKE YOU, WAS CONVICTED IN A COURT OF LAW FOR DOING SO. AND HIS LAWYER ADMITTED IT BUT TRIED TO LAUGH IT OFF AS VANILLA PENETRATION.

And all that really matters to good Christians like you is GET THE GAYS.

Oh, BTW, dearie.
Wolves have been spotted in Shepherd cloaks.
MATT 23 :25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.

26 Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.

27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.

28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,

30 And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.

Your ability to deny what you totally said is typical for you. I’m not embarrassed by this at all– another story you need to tell yourself, any more than you as a black man are embarrassed by Kelly.
I’m offended by it. Anyone with an ounce of brains, or no viciously antigay agenda, knows that this has nothing to with gay men in general. People who are not bigoted don’t take an isolated example of behavior by someone and try to blame an entire population for it. As a black man, you surely are familiar with what I am saying to you.

It’s way too late in THIS thread (or even in this nation!) for you as a gay guy to continue pretending that there’s anything “isolated” about a gay priest hunting down Catholic boys. John Jay done told the tale, and you got NO refutation on it.

You’ve got a large scale gay mess here that has public repercussions.

(Actually you got more than one large slimy gay mess on the public table, but I’m trying not to overload you about it.)

Still having reading comprehension problems, I see. I didn’t say that cardinal Pell is isolated, but we are talking about a small minority of priests, according to your good friend bob or mark. YOU are generalizing it to all gay men, just like your other best just did.
but never fear, dearie. I agree with you. Pell is just one more example a Catholic priest while being on the hunt so that he could molest small boys, big boys, anyone he could his hands on, as are a whole cohort of catholic priests. I agree with you, it’s despicable, disgusting, and ought to be punished.
What I don’t agree with you about, which you conveniently ignored in favor of changing the subject, that this has the slightest thing to do with gay men such as myself, my husband, my hundreds of friends and the thousands I have known or the gay community in general.
Some of these cases are pedophiles. I’m not, and I don’t know anyone who is.
The ones who are molesting late teenagers are in the minority. They are interested in late teenage boys. I’m not, and I don’t know anyone who is who isn’t pretty close to that age.
But ya know what? All of these predators are Catholic priests, not just some of them. All of them are men, not just some of them. all of them are faithless, not just some of them. all of them have sexual issues, not just some of them. Large swathes of the catholic hierarchy knew about all of this, and did nothing. I cannot believe that all of this was a secret to other priests, bishops, and the faithful.
It’s not a gay mess, dearie. It’s a CATHOLIC MESS. Avery Catholic mess. One that his been documented as a catholic mess for at least 1000 years, 970 years before there was ever a gay community.Your attempt to blame gay men or the community in general for it is only going to appeal to the kind of people who think like you.
The very fact that you and your ilk think that people are going to agree with you when you have been spouting the same nonsense for years, decades, centuries is precisely the reason you are losing the argument, at least outside of Russia and similar places, especially among young people.
good luck with it, dearie.
.

Just one article of a number of them. Then, also, since the Catholic Church has been busy denouncing gay people for decades or centuries, all the while having a SEXUAL ABUSE CRISIS which all of your favorite fellow travelers, including at least one with multiple identities, who are all screaming that this a is a homosexual abuse crisis…

Well, put that all together and you have a bunch of homosexual-hating-homosexuals hiding out in the church using their position in the church to pretend to exorcise the imaginary demons of other people while really trying to deflect attention from their own.

It’s not rocket surgery, dearie. It’s called projection. And it’s not propaganda if it turns out to be the truth and the whole truth. You don’t get to have it both ways, but I’m sure you’ll try.

At the request of another poster I unblocked you specifically to respond to your post.

The discussion was about Frederic Martel’s book “In the Closet of the Vatican”, which is largely a work of fiction.

Among his unsupported assertions is that “the most virulent opponents of gay rights who tend to be secretly gay themselves”.

Your citation references a series of studies dealing with homophobia among college students.

The book being discussed deals with a Church which has taught that same sex physical relations are sinful for nearly 2,000 years, not even close, and discusses mature leaders in that denomination, not college students.

You’re engaging in the same propaganda technique as the homosexual anti-Catholic Frederic Martel.

I appreciate the fact that you hate the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, the Orthodox Churches, and any and all other religions which stand in the way of what you want, how you want, and being d-mned quick giving it to you.

Yeah. It must be propaganda because you say so, and the studies that actually support my conclusion you disagree with. I’m convinced.

Mature leaders in the denomination? Do you mean the mature sexual abusers, or the mature men who looked the other way, or the mature ones in jail.

Considering that your rhetoric is identical to that of other posters, and seeing as I can’t seem to find a request from anyone that you unblock me— as if someone would actually keep track of the people you block besides you— you may feel free to go back to blocking me.

This reminds me of the Theodore McCarrick engineered patch to the John Jay Report, where in order to take the curse off the 80+% male-on-male abuse they inserted a study of prison rape in male-only prisoners.

“Often – as in Pell’s case – the victim is the only witness. Commentators have noted that Pell’s jury, and the public, had only limited information about the accuser and his background. His credibility, some have observed, although central to the court’s proceedings, was not allowed to be discussed.”

“Pell’s accuser offered a graphic account of being sexually abused by Pell in a busy Melbourne cathedral one Sunday morning in 1996. The accuser said another boy was abused at the same time; but that boy denied multiple times having been abused. Since he died in 2014, the court could not hear his testimony.”

I recall blocking your for your off-the-wall comments about the Australian Commission and see from this comment that you remain a steadfast opponent of Catholicism in Australia and supporter of the kangaroo court system in place in that country.

In the American church? The problem is world wide, every culture, every country.
And out of one personality, you moan about the Gay male Mafia that has infiltrated the church. Out of another personality, you claim that the church isn’t rife with homosexual hating homosexuals, pedophiles, and perverts.
how do you keep track of it all?

Funny how you block a reasonable, rational person like Mglass, but you won’t block me, after stating repeatedly that I am ignorant, bigoted, hateful, irrational dishonest, and quite possibly, a big poopy head.
Just think about how much happier you would be if you blocked me!!! No more incessant commenting on everything I say, no more obsessing over every thing i have ever said, no more blood pressure rising, no wallowing in righteous persecution, no need to call me an enemy of god, over and over and over and over and over and over….